By now, everyone who cares is aware of exactly what I want to do: you can't shut me up about this stuff. The application for funding is on its way in. But does the project really fit the institutional boundary conditions, and does it stand a chance of being funded?

If we recall part one of this series, I said that the science needs to be broken up into bite-sized chunks, each of which will turn out a good PhD or provide support for a post doc. I've done that: three good projects, each of which should succeed no matter what experimental results they obtain. In that sense, they are "safe." But, they also have elements that allow us to go for gold, producing results that will turn heads. In short, I think I've got a good balanced program in the works.

On the other hand, the laser system that enables it all seems... complicated. Certainly, the early work is going to involve a lot of set up time. And that should worry me, the funding agency, and the institution. I'm not going into this blind, however. I can't walk into a showroom and order a laser system, like you might a car. "Hi, I'd like the red M3 with the boy-racer body kit, low profile tires, mags, and red brakes. Oh, and because this is on the government ticket, please make it a diesel."

On the other hand, the components are all available and most of what I want can be obtained from a single commercial supplier. What I am looking for is a combination of two laser systems, both of which are known to work—the question is really in the details of implementation. I have asked the company that sells the systems if they can do it, and how much space it will take up.

Even so, I think it will take something like a year to get the full laser system up and running—I should hasten to add that we can start doing experiments with a partial laser system. That number, though, is very dependent on the degree of support I get from my host institute.

My gracious hosts

I have two options as far as hosts go. I am currently at the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER), where I work in a group that plays with X-ray optics. The X-ray optics group, though, is moving to the University of Twente (UT). I have a choice: moving to the UT with my current group, or staying with DIFFER. If I move to the UT, I will be expected to continue studies the physics and chemistry of X-ray optical elements. That research is a story of highly accurate deposition processes, diffusion, material mixing and reactions, and understanding surface chemistry.

These are challenging and interesting problems. The money for this type of research comes partially from government and partially from industry, which means that we end up working on an interesting mix of practical problems and physics. But, as you may have guessed, the work is a bit removed from what I would be planning to do, since none of the lasers I plan on using are in the X-ray region of the spectrum.

But chemistry is chemistry, and physics is physics. The surface phenomena that I currently study on the surface of an X-ray optic are the same as those going on in the liquids that I hope to be studying. The techniques I plan on using can be applied to understanding surface reactions. Furthermore, they provide a wonderful new tool for studying the layered structure that goes into making an X-ray optic. In other words, although the experiments I want to do in the project are not X-ray optics related, they are relevant to the work going on at UT.

That said, that means there is a promise to deliver. At some point, my fancy new laser system has to be turned on an X-ray optic and, when it is, it had better find something interesting. My arguments about relevance only buy time before I have to deliver something that is actually relevant, and I had better be truly committed to doing so. It would seem, then, that the UT would be a bad choice. The one appeal of UT is that its research program is bigger than the X-ray optics group—there are three other research groups that are deeply interested in the research I want to do. They don't have research programs that directly overlap, but they would certainly like to be engaged with the results and in related projects.

The end result of all of this is that my direct support from the X-ray group would be minimal and depend on work that is not directly included in the proposal. But, indirectly, there would be a great deal of support.

And that could be crucial. Since I will need experienced technicians to help build the equipment, support from outside the immediate group will be vital; my success will depend upon good relationships with neighboring research groups. A strong collaboration will be key to getting the experiment off the ground.

The alternative, DIFFER, is an energy research institute: fusion physics and artificial photosynthesis (referred to as solar fuels) are its specialties. There is an immediate connection here: I would be studying at a very low-level, the very basis of the physics and chemistry that underly artificial photosynthesis. Clearly, my direct connection here is better.

But DIFFER is also a very practical institute. Although I think they will enthusiastically support my ideas, in the end, they will want a payoff in terms of the ideas contributing in a very visible way to some part of the solar fuels effort. In that sense, they will see a risk in supporting me, even though they will also see a good chance of quality fundamental research coming out.

The downside is that DIFFER has very little in-house expertise with this sort of experiment. At the UT, I might be able to purchase technician time from experienced people who could set up the basic laser system. At DIFFER, I would have technician time, but the technicians would require a lot more supervision and may have less experience than I do in setting up such a laser system. That means that, at DIFFER, the first PhD student would have a much heavier burden to bear than if I was at the UT.

In the end, though, if I didn't think I was competent enough to do these experiments myself, I wouldn't be suggesting them—I could even build the laser system from components by myself if I had to. Therefore, it is better to ensure that I have good direct support and continue to generate external collaborations to make my research stronger. Since I can make that case easier at DIFFER, that is the place to be.

Tickling the tummy of the funding agency

What are the chances that I will get the money? From a straight odds perspective, they are low. But the straight odds never represent the true chances, so let's examine things more carefully. The European Research Council will be looking for innovative and interesting research. I think that I fit this criterium.

The other hurdle is assessing my quality as a researcher: does my history suggest I am worthwhile investment? Do I have the skills to carry out this research? This is where I am going to run into trouble. One of the reasons I can propose this research is that I have worked on a wide range of different physics experiments. I have papers on laser engineering, fundamental nonlinear optics, classical optics, theoretical atomic physics... the list goes on.

That's both good and bad. From one perspective, there is no true focus to my research. One cannot pick up my publication record and immediately point to some area of physics and say, "that's his field." The European Research Council may not see the specialization that would make it feel certain that I will deliver, but this project makes use of that. It crosses discipline boundaries, and I know enough about every aspect of the research to make it work.

This adds up to me being a risk. It is easy to make the case that I don't have the skills to carry out the research. And, because I haven't specialized, it is questionable that I will ever have the impact on a single field that other applicants may have. I am missing the research background that says, "these are experiments he knows like the back of his hand."

(Of course, I haven't seen any experiments quite like this before, so maybe no one can say that.)

I have to counter the perception of risk by arguing that my lack of specialization is actually good for this particular project: I know a fair amount about a lot of relevant topics, so I can reach a bit further. For the grant, I have to make the reviewers believe that no one else could carry out what I propose to do as effectively as I could. Specifically, to do this work, you need a background in lasers, optics, nonlinear optics, quantum physics, and chemistry. I have a relevant background in all of these, with the exception of chemistry. And my practical lab experience is directly relevant to the technical aspects of the project.

The other risk, one that I can't address, is that this all may be a bit too soon. I will be one of the youngest applicants. I was too young to be eligible last year. No matter what I would like to think, experience counts, and I don't have it.

But, but, you sounded so confident

You may be asking yourself why I am bothering if my chances seem so slim. The plain fact is that it takes most researchers more than one attempt to get this sort of research program off the ground. I will apply now in the full expectation of failing from the perspective of coming away with funding.

However, it is possible to make this application successful in other ways. In writing down my ideas, I was forced to clarify exactly what I wanted to do, how I would do it, and why I thought it was worth doing. These ideas have been seen by numerous friends and colleagues, who each offered feedback. Now, provided I make it past the first selection round, I will get even more feedback, this time from the anonymous reviewers of my grant. Even though their comments may kill my application this time around, I can learn from them, and craft a better proposal for the next opportunity. In the meantime, I can scramble around for the resources to begin a reduced-scale version of my grander goals. Every bit of research I turn out in the intervening time will strengthen my case in the next application.

Inside science: the future

By the time you read this, the paperwork will be at the European Research Council. Since it always takes time for grants to be evaluated and decisions to be made, the Inside science series will take a break. The long-term plan is that, as the grant proceeds through the review process, I will continue to provide updates. In the event that I am kicked out in the first round (which means no review and no feedback), the series may continue through progress on a different grant applications.

In any case, for now, all I can offer is a meaningless corporate slogan: "Forward to the future."

Chris Lee
Chris writes for Ars Technica's science section. A physicist by day and science writer by night, he specializes in quantum physics and optics. He lives and works in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Emailchris.lee@arstechnica.com//Twitter@exMamaku

The other hurdle is assessing my quality as a researcher: does my history suggest I am worth investment? Do I have the skills to carry out this research? This is where I am going to run into trouble. One of the reasons I can propose this research is that I have worked on a wide range of different physics experiments. I have papers on laser engineering, fundamental nonlinear optics, classical optics, theoretical atomic physics... the list goes on

Just as an aside, you're probably more likely to get the laser you want than the exact car you want. The ubiquitous "Build your _____ " on auto manufacturer's sites seem to be complete bunk/vaporware. Maybe things are different for high-end cars, but for the Mazda and Toyota vehicles we purchased this year (and the Ford we looked at but didn't get), the only actual vehicles you could purchase were what they had on their lot, were about to get on their lot, or maybe if you begged and pleaded, something a different dealer in the region had on their lot. So very different from putting together a machine at Lenovo or Dell.

Just as an aside, you're probably more likely to get the laser you want than the exact car you want. The ubiquitous "Build your _____ " on auto manufacturer's sites seem to be complete bunk/vaporware. Maybe things are different for high-end cars, but for the Mazda and Toyota vehicles we purchased this year (and the Ford we looked at but didn't get), the only actual vehicles you could purchase were what they had on their lot, were about to get on their lot, or maybe if you begged and pleaded, something a different dealer in the region had on their lot. So very different from putting together a machine at Lenovo or Dell.

At least in Germany it really does work - you mix up all of the allowed options and the dealer tells you how long it will take to deliver: a combination that's pretty popular or only a cosmetic modification will come quite quickly, something more exotic like a full-size sliding glass roof might take six weeks because it isn't that popular and means changes quite early in the production cycle. It's not paradise - market segmentation means that some features are only available with a more expensive base model - but it does give a useful degree of customisation. And it's certainly popular - woe betide the manufacturer who elects not to offer the service.

Naively it doesn't seem as if it requires more than a sensibly designed production process and good two-way comms between the dealer network and the factory, so it's puzzling that Mazda (etc) don't just do it for real, rather than pretending to and risking pissed-off customers.

Just as an aside, you're probably more likely to get the laser you want than the exact car you want. The ubiquitous "Build your _____ " on auto manufacturer's sites seem to be complete bunk/vaporware. Maybe things are different for high-end cars, but for the Mazda and Toyota vehicles we purchased this year (and the Ford we looked at but didn't get), the only actual vehicles you could purchase were what they had on their lot, were about to get on their lot, or maybe if you begged and pleaded, something a different dealer in the region had on their lot. So very different from putting together a machine at Lenovo or Dell.

If you missed out on anything you really wanted, or were forced to buy more than you really wanted, and weren't needing to buy a car by x date, you need to find better dealerships.

Mazda I know from experience, they'll try to find what you want on their lot or a nearby (Few hundred miles around?) dealership, and if not, tell you how long you have to wait for a factory order to spec.

For a factory order, you have to put up a bit of cash up front that they can keep if you cancel your order (covering their ass for ordering a car with option combo they don't think people want, just for you). Back when I almost bought a Mazda3, that was a ~3 month wait. (I wanted x options in x color, which just wasn't available or in the current order chain, but if I put $500 or $1000 down (Forget which), they were happy to make one of their next round of orders my exact car.

They can't swap stuff on/off at the dealership as much as they used to be able to, but you can get the car you want for the most part, especially if you're willing/able to wait.

These are good articles. As research money gets harder to obtain, especially for basic science, a would-be scientist is forced to compromise between research for love and research for job security. I'm delighted to see young scientists still trying. After 15 years or so of grant support, I have accepted an opportunity to go 100% education. Not getting funded toward the end was getting too hard to take. But I consider myself a success.. I remain in academics, enjoyed the whole trip and still have a future to look forward to. Best of luck.

Hey Chris, maybe you can arrange for a visit to Twente for a face to face talk with some of the guys you'd be working with there? Hopefully that would firm up some of your speculation about the level of support and general work environment. Whatever you decide, good luck.

Chris,Your first paragraph and a lookback at the first article really grabbed me about the duty to your PhD students.. My advisor to be headed to the Cambridge MRC (molecular bio lab) for a year sabbatical with some vague instructions to me to look at the RecA gene in e coli while he was gone after my first didactic year. The gene had been IDed but the product not characterized. He told me to find it and purify it. He left me in Berkeley to thrash about with no guidance except from some fellow grad students and post docs grinding away to pad their CVs.I saw no end, a wasted year. I left.

I am now a practicing rheumatologist.

The science training has been very useful in the practice of my craft. Nature Lover

I visit Ars every day and I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. The first page or so of the science section don't answer that question either.

Not even a link to the article(s) I obviously missed?

On the full site, the links to the earlier articles are in a box right beside the first paragraph. But, the mobile site doesn't contain that box, so I've also linked to them in the first paragraph now.

On the full site, the links to the earlier articles are in a box right beside the first paragraph. But, the mobile site doesn't contain that box, so I've also linked to them in the first paragraph now.

These articles are becoming exactly where in undergrad, and occasionally graduate physics we shove people's asses straight over to philosophy. Not sure how this guy made it through even if he played the "good with math / theorist" card.

Reminds me a lot of a George Carlin bit, "Oh, that's really interesting... uh huh, uh huh, I never looked at it that way, interesting, uh huh, wait, what... he's full of shit!"

Also, chemistry is chemistry / physics is physics. No, you should be fired any academic organization under whom you are employed. Chemistry is mostly physics on a 40-70 year delay (older profs like to make the 1880's physics / pre-Einstein / pre-quantum theory joke, but really they have caught up a lot faster in chemistry than the biologists).

My last bit of commentary: no respectable publication puts editorial, especially stream of thought or consciousness articles on the front page. They degrade the legitimacy and weight of the publication.

These articles are becoming exactly where in undergrad, and occasionally graduate physics we shove people's asses straight over to philosophy. Not sure how this guy made it through even if he played the "good with math / theorist" card.

Reminds me a lot of a George Carlin bit, "Oh, that's really interesting... uh huh, uh huh, I never looked at it that way, interesting, uh huh, wait, what... he's full of shit!"

Well, it may be true that I am full of shit, but, even if I am entirely wrong, the experiments to prove it will find interesting stuff. Unfortunately, funding agencies don't accept the truthful argument of "I think these experiments would be really cool to do, and we will find interesting stuff." Instead, they like arguments of the sort of "These particular physical phenomena are really really important (in terms of playing a role in some aspect of nature) to understand and will lead to all this other cool stuff, so lets go do these experiments." Both statements are, essentially, the same, but one emphasizes what is known and what is going to be done, while the other expresses a belief on the part of the physicist. The referees who judge these things like to know both.

Quote:

Also, chemistry is chemistry / physics is physics. No, you should be fired any academic organization under whom you are employed. Chemistry is mostly physics on a 40-70 year delay (older profs like to make the 1880's physics / pre-Einstein / pre-quantum theory joke, but really they have caught up a lot faster in chemistry than the biologists).

Actually, that wasn't intended as a comment about separation between fields. What I was trying to indicate is that, no matter what model system I perform experiments on, the findings will, most likely, be applicable to a wider range (if they weren't, the model system could hardly be called a model system). The point being, in that particular case, even though my experiments would be on liquids (or amorphous solids), they can still, with some caution, be applied to the thin amorphous layers that are used to make (and destroy) X-Ray optics. It was a comment about universality more than anything else.

Is this a New Investigator Award that you're applying for? I went for one 3/4 years ago. Had to write a full application and also an approx. 8 page summary of that application. The European Research Council panels used to triage each application by reading the summary and they ditched it, they wouldn't even bother reading the full application. Good luck to you - I hope you get through to the interview stage...because they are, err, "interesting"...in that my ERC interview was (I hope) the closest thing I'm ever likely to experience to extraordinary rendition...

So, the first three paragraphs, and the title, were unintelligible nonsense, with no context except the vague mention of some previous article. That happens to be all the information that gets through to the RSS feed, so I didn't bother reading the rest of the article.

This is an interesting article from the perspective of a potential grant applicant. You are missing the other half of the story: how the reviewers decide what to fund. The section entitled "Tickling the tummy of the funding agency" reads more like speculation than actual knowledge. Most academics have little concept of the process and merely "throw it over the wall" and hope for success. A better understanding of how decisions are made, the relative merits between scientific interest, cost, timeline, experience, and proposed deliverables will no doubt prove enlightening to yourself and your readers (or at least the ones that keep track of the thread of these articles).

Each funding agency has different relative weights to priorities, different amounts of funding available to individual contributors vs. large coalitions, and different processes for making decisions. While you may not be able to do a thorough survey of the leading agencies, it might behoove you to perform some investigative journalism to better know two or three.

So, the first three paragraphs, and the title, were unintelligible nonsense, with no context except the vague mention of some previous article. That happens to be all the information that gets through to the RSS feed, so I didn't bother reading the rest of the article.

If you are on the mobile feed links have been attached, see Chris's response to KarlShea, iff on the full site its linked in the box to the right of the start of the article. You reallize I hope that you are on the 3rd of a 4 part article? If not, maybe next time you could do a little checking before starting the whine syndrome.

So, the first three paragraphs, and the title, were unintelligible nonsense, with no context except the vague mention of some previous article. That happens to be all the information that gets through to the RSS feed, so I didn't bother reading the rest of the article.

If you are on the mobile feed links have been attached, see Chris's response to KarlShea, iff on the full site its linked in the box to the right of the start of the article. You reallize I hope that you are on the 3rd of a 4 part article? If not, maybe next time you could do a little checking before starting the whine syndrome.

If you actually read my comment, you'd see I'm on the RSS feed, where there are no such links. Some simple contextual linking (like those that have now been added, thanks Chris) would have provided a path.